Moment of Truth
by houseonfire
Summary: Cameron sorts through her feelings for Dr. House. CameronHouse pairing. REVISED Chapter 3 is up.
1. Chapter 1

_It's my fault. All my fault._

She says the words aloud, as if to punish herself. She is curled into a ball on the bench that runs down the center of the locker room.

She had insisted they push the Actrinil. Why? _Why_? It was a long shot at best.

A ten-year old boy was dying. His organs were failing rapidly. They sat together while House stood in front of the white board with a marker, listing the boy's symptoms.

"It's Wakeman-Sinkler Disease." She nodded her head firmly, but even she wasn't sure.

"Are you kidding? Wakeman-Sinkler affects people of Mediterranean descent. This kid is blonde haired and blue-eyed." Chase leaned back in his chair. She might ordinarily have nodded in agreement and looked for some other cause, but it was the way he had said it, so smug, so condescending. She wouldn't give in.

"Usually. But it's also been found to a lesser extent in the Scandinavian population." She looked at Foreman and House for support. "It's Wakeman-Sinkler. It all fits. The seizures, the organ failure. It fits."

"Treatment, Dr. Cameron?"

She hesitated, licked her lips. "Actrinil." Foreman and Chase groaned.

"Actrinil will take care of the siezures..." Foreman started.

"...But if you're wrong..." Chase continued. He stared at her. God, when had he started hating her so much?

"I'm not wrong. And if I'm wrong, he's dead anyway."

She looked up at House. He narrowed his eyes. "All right. Push the Actrinil."

So, they had pushed the Actrinil. And she had been wrong. His organs had continued to fail, and before they could find another cause for the boy's symptoms, he had died.

So, she sits now in the locker room.

She had found Chase so attractive and charming when they first met, with his confident, almost arrogant bearing. She had wondered, _hoped_, that something might happen between them.

Then, despite all efforts to the contrary, she had developed feelings for Dr. House. Chase had sensed it, and his attitude towards her changed overnight from merely patronizing to contemptuous.

She had been so determined to show him up, to impress Dr. House, that she had let her own ego get in the way, and a boy had died.

The door to the locker room opens then. She stares down at the floor, shielding her eyes with her hands. There is a squeaking on the linoleum of the locker room floor, and House's cane and sneakers slip into her view.

He exhales heavily and bounces the rubber tip of his cane on the floor before he finally speaks. "It was a good call, but it could have gone either way. We can't save them all." There is nothing comforting in his voice. It is cold, flat, matter-of-fact.

She shakes her head. "I shouldn't have pushed so hard. I should have looked for something else."

He stands for a moment, silent. It is a silly, schoolgirl notion, she knows, and she has fought it, but she aches for him to sit beside her and draw her into a comforting embrace.

She waits for him to speak, to leave, _something_. She stares down at his feet and dabs at her wet face with the sleeve of her lab coat.

Finally, he speaks. "Perhaps your boyfriends find these little boo-hoo sessions appealing, or you're under the impression that they make you look sensitive and vulnerable. But really, it's just self-indulgent and weak. If you want to be a doctor, wipe the snot off your nose and get back to work. I'll see you in my office in ten minutes. Otherwise, go home and play with your Barbies."

He turns, then, and walks out of the locker room. She sits in stunned silence for a moment and wipes away the fresh, stinging tears that have popped into her eyes. After a moment, she rises from the bench, and with a calming breath, she walks into the hallway.

OOOOOOOOO

She hesitates, before she goes in. Her fingertips leave little marks on the glass door as she stands there. This will not go well, it never does. She always says too much; he, not enough.

"You wanted to see me?"

He frowns and throws down his pencil. "Why do people always say that? Did I not make it clear?"

She stands for a moment, wondering if she is supposed to respond. Then, he gestures to the chair in front of his desk. She crosses, her hands tucked nervously in the pockets of her lab coat.

She tries in vain to read his face. It is as if the little scene in the locker room had never happened.

He reaches in his desk and pulls out a bound volume of pages and tosses it in front of her.

"What's this?"

"It's a paper that I wrote on Legionnaire's Disease. It's being presented this weekend at this year's Diagnostic Medicine Conference in Philadelphia. The site of the most famous outbreak of – wait for it – Legionnaire's Disease."

"Oh." She picks up the paper and thumbs through the pages. "And you wanted me to read it?"

"I want you to present it at the conference. Whether or not you actually read it is up to you."

She swallows hard and looks up at him. "_Me?_ Shouldn't you be presenting your own paper?"

"I don't _do_ public speaking."

She stammers helplessly for a moment, weighing the paper in her hand. "But it's two days away. I really don't think…"

He leans back in his chair and gives her a dismissive wave. "No one's going to be paying attention anyway. They're all too soused from hitting the hospitality suites. Cooling towers: bad. Erythromycin: good. That's all you need to know. And wear something low cut. They won't hear a word you say."

"Dr. House…" she protests weakly. "Why me? Why not Foreman or Chase?"

He nods and gives a slight smile. He has expected the question and reaches in his desk, pulls out a file and opens it. She recognizes her curriculum vitae on the top. He picks it up and she can see Chase's and Foreman's underneath.

"'Allison Cameron, M.D.," he reads in a mock-weighty voice. He flips to the last page and his eyes fall to the bottom. "Under 'Interests…" does anyone _really_ list their interests on these things anymore? you have written, tennis, history, and theatre. Tennis to make you seem athletic and outdoorsy, history to make you seem brainy, and theatre to make you seem artistic and maybe a little kooky. And also to make your boss choose you to present a very ponderous and boring paper at a very ponderous and boring conference. You like theatre. Think of it as an acting exercise. You'll be playing a doctor."

She narrows her eyes, wondering if it is an insult, then he reaches back in to his desk and pulls out an envelope. "The agenda, directions to the hotel, and a Metroliner ticket to Philadelphia." He leans forward and wiggles his fingers at her. She has been dismissed. "Have fun."

OOOOOOOOO

He is right. No one is paying attention.

There are maybe ten people in the darkened room. More, if you count the man in the third row who appears to have nodded off.

A man in the front row loosens his tie and stifles a yawn. Someone a few rows back coughs incessantly, and her halting speech is frequently interrupted by the irritating sound of throat lozenges slowly being unwrapped.

The only light in the room is from the overhead projector next to her. Between that and the audience's post-lunch lethargy, her shaking hands will go unnoticed.

The sleeping man lets out a little snore and she continues. Her voice has gone high and squeaky, as it always does when she is nervous. "Increasing awareness among physicians and use of more sensitive, noninvasive tests such as urine antigen testing has led to improved recognition of sporadic cases and outbreaks caused by _Legionella pneumophila_…"

A cell phone goes off then, and a woman in the back of the room answers it as she rises to her feet and stumbles down the aisle. The door opens, and light from the hallway spills into the darkened room.

It is then that she sees him, but just as soon, he is gone again, slipping through the door before it closes.

She watches him go and the door shuts with a heavy thud. The cougher coughs nervously to break the silence she has left. She goes on. "Rapid detection of travel-related legionellosis is needed to identify potentially preventable disease transmission…"

But she is rattled and thinking only if his unmistakable silhouette against the brightness.


	2. Chapter 2

It is over, and her hands have steadied. She sits sipping at a white wine. She so often feels awkward and clumsy in her life, but there seems to be something sophisticated and "big girl" to her about sipping a chardonnay at a near-empty hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon.

She is trying to look casual, but she anxiously turns toward the doorway each time someone strolls in. She hopes in the ridiculous schoolgirl corner of her brain that he will come in and confess his love and she will be ready with something witty and charming to say.

But why _has_ he come? To watch her squirm? Whatever it was, he is gone now, and she has a train to catch.

She takes her briefcase, weighed down by House's paper and starts out. She is halfway down the hall when she hears the piano coming from one of the empty ballrooms. Cole Porter. _Night and Day_. She smiles to herself. The door has been propped open, and she cranes her head around the corner.

The ballroom is empty. There is a baby grand piano pushed into the corner, and someone has sneaked in to play.

It is House, bent over the piano, head down, eyes closed. His fingers fly gracefully over the keys. He is beautiful.

She enters quietly and watches him play for a moment before speaking.

"Cole Porter," she says.

Suddenly, his eyes snap open, and he pulls his hands away from the keys as if from a hot stove. He is frozen there with his curled fingers poised above the keyboard. He is caught, and he can think of nothing more clever to say than, "Yes."

She moves toward him tentatively. "I love Cole Porter." She smiles wistfully. "I was in a high school production of _Anything Goes,_"

"Let me guess. You played the sweet and innocent ingenue Hope Harcourt."

She is being teased, and she knows it. "How did you guess?"

"Reno Sweeney, you're not." A moment passes, and their eyes are locked. His fingers are suspended still above the keys. Finally, "Well, I guess I'd…" And he is fumbling for his cane.

"No, don't!" She reaches out and impulsively touches his wrist, and it is as if a small charge has been sent through her body. "Play something else. Please. I love this kind of music. When I was growing up, all my friends were listening to grunge and rap, and I was listening to Gershwin and Jerome Kern." She smiles, almost embarrassed. "I'd love to hear more."

He sits for a moment with his hands on his thighs, but then he lifts them and curls his long, elegant fingers and they begin to play. Jerome Kern. _The Way You Look Tonight._

She loves the song. "_Oh…but you're lovely."_ The line seems the hopeless, ineloquent expression of someone who can't put into words just how beautiful his loved one is. It seems appropriate now, as she looks down into his gaunt face, and he looks back up at her with his haunted eyes.

It has been a long time since she has sung in public, but she sings along, softly, as the song ends and the last notes trickle away into nothingness.

"I can see there's a reason you went into medicine and not musical theatre," he teases, but it is gentle, and there is a smile small at the corner of his mouth. Her cheeks go pink.

He begins to play again. The wine has given her courage, and she walks to the piano bench and perches there next to him. She can feel his body tense as her arm brushes against his, and they sit silently together as he plays.

It strikes her, then. He has come for _her._

She speaks softly, warmly. "I didn't think you were coming."

"I said I didn't do public speaking. I never said I didn't do conferences." The lilting melody changes then into a series of harsh, strident chords. "I mean, the place is crawling with pharmaceutical reps laden down with free samples."

He looks at her with dark eyes, and the spell is broken. Her head drops as he slides off of the piano bench.

"If I'm not mistaken, you've got a train to catch, Dr. Cameron." He staggers out as quickly as he can, leaving her there alone in the empty ballroom.

OOOOOOOO

**A/N: "The Way You Look Tonight" is my favorite song, and one of my favorite renditions is from the movie "Peter's Friends" as performed by Imelda Staunton and…Hugh Laurie! Check it out if you haven't seen it.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This is a REVISED Ch. 3 from the previous version, where I inexplicably referred to the RSL character as "Dr. Lewis." All I can say is I forget my _own_ name sometimes!**

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Monday. She has replayed their meeting countless times in her mind during the weekend. His shadow in the door, the music, the brief touch of her skin against his.

She has waited all day for him to speak, to say something about the conference, the ballroom. Instead he has barely been able to look at her. Any questions or comments she has made throughout the course of the day have been met with blank stares or caustic replies.

On some level, she knows she could not have expected anything else. How could it have been clearer than when she asked him hopefully if he liked her and he had replied with chilling finality, "No."

It should have been the end of it, but those kind of things never mean the end. Not for Allison. It's not in her nature to be dissuaded so easily when it comes to matters of the heart.

So she watches Dr. House as he writes the last of the man's symptoms and turns around, bouncing the whiteboard marker restlessly in his hand.

"Well? What is it?"

"Tumor would be the obvious," says Chase.

"It would be. Except every MRI and CT scan says otherwise," Dr. Wilson responds evenly.

There is a silence. "Cryptococcus_?"_ she says, a question more than a statement.

House cuts his eyes to her. There is a glint in his eye. "_Cryptococcus?"_ he asks.

"...Yes..." she answers hesitantly. Her mouth has gone dry. "Headaches, dizziness, sleepiness, confusion. All symptoms of cryptococcus."

"Cryptococcus. Cryptococcus." He repeats it again with a widening smirk. "Let's see. Is the patient an _infant?"_

"No."

"_Elderly_?"

She swallows hard. "No, he's a 45 year old man."

"Does he have _HIV_ or an otherwise _compromised immune system_?" His voice drips with sarcasm.

"No." She looks down and squirms uncomfortably. "But it's found in bird droppings. I thought if he works outside.."

"Does the patient work _outside_?" No!" he answers his own question. This is more than House's usual sarcasm, more than his usual callous treatment of her or Chase or Foreman. Her lip quivers. "The patient is an attorney who works inside 15 hours a day, and from the looks of him, he hasn't exercised outdoors since the late eighties. So, _what_ would _possibly_ make you think it's cryptococcus?"

"I was just..." she looks at Foreman and Chase for support. They look away uncomfortably. "I was just batting around ideas."

"Batting around ideas?" The room suddenly seems airless and still. He staggers towards her and leans down. His voice is cold and empty. "We're not the student council trying to come up with a really cool theme for the senior prom. We're trying to save a life. Don't waste my time with cryptococcus."

She quickly brushes away the tears that have sprung to her eyes. He scowls and turns from her.

Someone suggests more serology tests and a lumbar puncture, but she has ceased to listen. He dismisses them, and she is first out the door.

They are gone. House glares at Wilson and dares him to speak. "Ouch," Wilson says after a moment. "That was pretty harsh, don't you think?

He grabs his cane and staggers into the hallway. Wilson catches up with him. "What was _that_ all about?"

House gives him a dismissive wave. "Nothing. She's just..." He sighs. "She's got this idiotic crush on me."

"On _you_? Yeah, I can see why. You're so _dreamy." _ Wilson snorts.

House ignores him and slaps at the elevator button. "She seems to think I reciprocate."

Wilson eyes him warily. "You're her _boss_, Greg. You _do_ know what dangerous territory you're getting into, don't you?"

"Tell me again...which of your wives was also one of your med students?"

"Do as I say, not as I do," Wilson responds with a rueful smile and waits a beat before continuing. "So...do you reciprocate?"

House rolls his eyes. "Of _course_ not. I'm her _boss_. That's ridiculous." The elevator door slides open and House steps inside.

"Methinks the cripple doth protest too much."

"You know, people always misquote that line. It doesn't mean what you think it means. _Hamlet_. Act III, scene ii. Look it up." And the elevator doors slide shut.

But of course, he has not told the truth to anyone, least of all himself. His eyes cannot stand his own reflection in the doors as they close, and the elevator swallows him up.


End file.
